Maybe you’re an Asker too

I’ve been wanting to write a book since my teens, I’m now 65… and utterly bookless.

There are days when I still want to write on paper. It’s not that writing on a device is bad. Maybe it’s just a certain freedom I get from paper. Which includes the grip of a pen. I stare longingly at expensive pens in art and office supply stores. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s a tactile thing, along with an odd sense that somehow, some special pen will reveal an intimate mystery to me.

Some writers use paper in a different way: like the typewriter. I can see the charm, but I’m not a purist. Although, that brings me to a point. While not ideologically pure in one sense, I am ideologically curious about certain things. Like certain kinds of questions.

The odd world of the Asker

Do you have a lot of unanswered questions, no matter how much you Google? Always asking this or that, even if it’s done silently?

Do you think, for example, that when paper first came along people resisted the whole notion of it? Maybe they preferred the feel of writing on animal hides. Or maybe some were still clinging to the permanence of stone tablets. And what about the simplicity of sticks scratching in the dirt?

Speaking of stone tablets, I started wondering what makes certain writing sacred. I mean, why not develop an app to write a sacred spiritual text? You could be famous and remembered, although you’d probably need a strange sounding name like Habakkuk.

I wonder if the reason we don’t have any current sacred texts is because our names are just too plain for the Lord.

I’m a counter, by the way, so The Book of Numbers might be a good match for a guy like me. I count going up and down stairs, or how many steps it takes to get to the garage or the dumpster. Step counting seems consequential to me. Even though I know it’s not. 38. That’s how many steps up to my apartment. But that’s just up. Across the landing to the door is another 26.

What’s inspiring about Book of Numbers, though, is that even though it’s full of endless genealogies, which are mind-numbingly boring, it just goes to show that you really don’t need to be a great writer to produce long-lasting work.

I’ve thought about writing for the Almighty

What with the Bible being the inerrant Word of God, and what with every single word uttered or inspired by God himself, I’m intrigued by the concept of spending the rest of my life being inspired by God to write a Revised Book of Numbers.

But then, I’d need advice from some experts. Maybe I should consult with the Monks, Nuns and Scribes in the Monastery of Nothingness. And get their opinions.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t ask. Because they would probably tell me this is what ancestry.com already does. Which makes me wonder if genealogy is also the inerrant, inspired Word of God: each word, each comma, each name, each tribe — all dictated by The Lord God Most High. The Book of Modern Day Numbers.

Maybe I should get more interested in genealogies. For example, if you find your name on ancestry.com, does that mean you are automatically in the Book of Life? Because that’s the rationale here. That you’re one of the chosen ones, pretty much guaranteed a place in heaven. Are you feeling comforted by this?

Do you notice how one question invariably leads to another? It’s like never outgrowing childhood inquisitiveness, but in a sometimes annoying, boorish way. Which means I rarely ask my questions out loud. And which also means that it can be tough to write that first book. Because there’s rarely any resolution if you’re an Asker. It just keeps going. And going and going.

And we readers want answers, not questions. Questions are for writers, poets, mystics and physicists. And only one of them gets paid.